Make a Container Garden for Instant Color (compost recycling)
No commentsBy Paige Mercer
Are you are a gardening fan? Are you partial to ceramics and pottery and you could not just stomach the thought of parting with your old clay pottery and ceramic containers? Then you may just think about making container gardens they may just be the ideal solution for you. The best thing about container gardening is that even very small spaces can produce fruit to a healthy crop of plants and vegetables. You must simply know which pots and ceramics you can use as containers. Here are some tips about how you can pick among the various pots to plant your seeds in and start a beautiful container garden in your own home:
Steer clear of pots that have narrow spaces for openings. You need room to work and the plants will need room to spread and grow.
Go for ceramic pots that have a glazed surface as opposed to inferior plastic pots that might soften and ultimately melt due to the hot sun and those terra cotta pots that just dry out too quickly, not leaving any moisture for your plants to grow on.
Use cedar or redwood containers that are resistant to rotting instead of other wooden pots that can rot away quickly. These pots can also be ideal since they could be constructed in different sizes or shapes depending on where you are thinking of putting them them in your home or yard.
Do not use very small containers that will delay your plants growth. You can go from fifteen up to one hundred and twenty quarts capacity based on the plant or vegetable you are planning to plant.
Check to see if your container gardens have good enough drainage for extra water to seep out.
To be able to allow drainage and not block it in any way, set your planters on top of either bricks or cement blocks.
In hot weather or climate, use lightly colored pots to minimize absorption of the heat and avoid the soils as well as roots from drying out completely.
If you are going to use a hanging basket, keep them away from the afternoon sun to keep soil moist and not dry them out.
Clay containers lose moisture quickly so this should be monitored closely for water loss.
Container gardens are not only pretty, they also has many benefits such as being a enjoyable activity that allows people to reflect and just calm down. This is also ideal for the elderly as well as disabled people who may not be able to keep up a conventional garden.
Plant a container garden on your patio or deck. You will love to share fresh herbs and vegetables that you grow yourself. It is easy and fun, you may discover you have a green thumb!
Paige is a self-employed writer who enjoys spending time with her family She loves to garden and finds ways to make it simpler. As an author she loves writing about subjects that interest her such as gardening. She loves teaching classes about relationships in her community.
Your Source For Composting Instructions And Information
Organically Improving Your Soil with Vermiculture
By Jeffry Bullock
Maybe you’ve never heard the term vermiculture, if so don’t feel bad, many experienced gardeners are unfamiliar with this organic practice. I think vermiculture is fascinating; simply put it’s the process of composting kitchen waste with earthworms. We’re not talking about common night crawlers, but special varieties of worms such as red worms, and red wigglers.
Okay, I’ll admit to owning an ant farm when I was a kid, but this is so much more practical. Vermiculture, or vermicomposting as its also known is more like beekeeping; yes I’ve given that a try too. But just imagine for a second, you feed the worms your leftover garbage and kitchen scraps. The worms then quickly eat all those leftovers, sparing you the hassles of taking out the garbage.
And here’s the best part, while the composting worms are disposing of your garbage, they’re also producing a terrific organic fertilizer and soil conditioner called earthworm castings. Well, okay… the term earthworm casting is just a nice name for earthworm excrement. I don’t know who thought up the name earthworm castings, but I guess it makes sense if you think it through.
You may have seen worm castings for sale at your local garden center and didn’t realize what you were dealing with, but now you know. Don’t worry, earthworm castings are clean, odorless, and sterile… trust me on this one. You don’t need gloves or a shovel to handle them, and they are wonderful for improving your soil quality and for promoting the growth and health of all your plants.
So you can purchase bags of earthworm castings to use around the garden or if you’re a little more adventurous you can set up an “earthworm farm” and produce your own. The farm is actually just a worm bin that can be set up indoors or outdoors depending on the climate.
Vermicomposting isn’t complicated, but the worms are living creatures, and have certain requirements. For example they don’t tolerate extremely hot living conditions, and they also won’t survive freezing. The worms are pretty healthy eaters, so while eggshells are fine, don’t try slipping any meat, fats, or greasy foods into their diet.
If this sounds a little like having a pet, well it is. Not terribly demanding, but they do require a little of your attention to make sure that things run smoothly. In exchange they’ll be hard at work performing their community service to save the environment and to help you grow a better garden.
Kids love vermicomposting and some schools even include vermiculture as part of the curriculum. For those of you wishing that they had grown up with a worm bin instead of that ant farm, it’s not too late to try one out. You can find plans for building homemade bins or you can purchase fancy multi-level bins over the Internet. And unlike those ant farms, you can have these bins delivered complete with the composting worms.
If you’re up for the challenge and interested in recycling your family’s kitchen waste into a valuable fertilizer and soil conditioner, try your hand at vermiculture. During long winters, it may even help to pass the time until you can get back out into the garden.
To learn about celosia caracas and celosia plumosa, visit the Celosia Flower website.
Six Easy Steps to Start Raised Bed Gardening
By Piper Cox
By definition, raised bed gardening is to simply have a garden that is built on top of your existing native soil. You can either choose combine native soil in your raised bed garden or you can choose not to - its entirely up to you. You can plant vegetables, herbs and even shrubs in a raised bed garden. Read below for the six easy steps on how to start a raised bed garden for yourself.
1. Choose your planting site properly and carefully. Make sure that you pick a spot that gets at least eight hours of warm sunlight every day. The area must be flat with enough moving room for you to work around in as well as being near a water source.
2. Be definite on the size and shape of your garden. Be sure that you would be able to have enough space to move around in so you would not step on to the plant bed.
3. Make sure that you prepare your planting area according to what you are planning to plant in it.
4. Construct your plant bed carefully. Choose wood planks that are sturdy enough to hold the sides of your garden bed in. Raised bed gardening is not that hard if you have properly set up your garden bed.
5. Make sure that you use level frames in all four directions. This is important because your water will not be evenly distributed if you have un-level soil areas. It would fill one spot and run over another very quickly. Either way, your plants would not get the proper water they would need to grow.
6. The idea behind raised bed gardening is that it allows you the chance to be able to plant your garden by using flat, even soil. Be sure that when you start to fill your raised bed garden that you have appropriate amounts of topsoil, manure and compost and that the bed is raked flat and evenly before you start to put in your seeds.
If you were able to set it up correctly, you will be happy to know that raised bed gardening does not require a lot of maintenance at all. Just keep in mind that it is important to have as much moisture in your soil as possible to make sure that your plants will be able to absorb the minerals and nutrients that are in it quickly and more efficiently, thus giving you a healthier and more bountiful crop harvest.
Piper likes exercise, article writing, and working in her yard. She likes to work in the yard with her Mantis tiller. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends and enjoying her garden. Piper searches out the best garden tools to make her yard work a lot easier.
Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at 3:35 am and is filed under gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
